Odesa and Mykolaiv in the top ten: activists update list of monuments to be dismantled

Activists of the NGO Decolonization.Ukraine have updated their list of monuments that they believe should be dismantled for decolonization.

The activists placed the bust of Pushkin in Odesa on Prymorsky Boulevard at the top of their list.

The monument to Mykhailo Vorontsov in Odesa is in third place, the monument to Alexander II (Alexander's Column in Taras Shevchenko Park) is in fifth place, the monument to Pushkin near the museum of the same name in Odesa is in seventh place, and the monument to "Fighters for the Power of the Soviets" in Mykolaiv is in ninth place.

It is also in the top 100:

• Monument to Lenin's Komsomol in Mykolaiv.
• Monument to Suvorov in Ochakiv.
• Monument to Admiral Makarov in Mykolaiv.
• Monument to Lyagin in Mykolaiv.
• Monument to Karbyshev in Kherson.
• Monument to Vysotsky in Odesa.
• Monument to Leo Tolstoy in Odesa.
• Kotovsky's mausoleum in Podilsk, Odesa region.
• Monument to Pushkin in Tatarbunary.
• Monument to Inzov in Bolhrad.
• A bust of Malynovskyi in Odesa.

The list also includes a monument to Malynovskyi in Odesa and a bust of Kutuzov in Ochakiv.

On September 26, members of the executive committee appointed the Capital Construction Department of the Odesa City Council as the customer for the design of dismantling (transferring, removing) monuments from public space in Odesa.

Prior to that, the head of the Odesa City Council, Oleh Kiper, said in an interview with City of Power that he had signed an order to dismantle the monument to Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, which is located on Prymorskyi Boulevard in front of the city hall.

On the night of September 6, activists Demian Hanul and Vladislav Balynsky demolished the bas-relief depicting the Hero of the Soviet Union star and the Order of Lenin. The day before, Marina Boyko, a member of the city council from the European Solidarity party, appealed to Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov to dismantle or temporarily close the base-reliefs of the Order of Lenin and the medal on the Wings of Victory monument on the square. On the morning of September 28, it became known that the activists had broken the bas-reliefs.

Among the objects to be dismantled in Odesa is a mass grave of Red Guards on Kulykove Pole. Defenders of the Ukrainian People's Republic may be buried there. The city authorities are going to exhume the bodies and move them to another cemetery.

Кирило Бойко